The Astronomer and the Macaw
by iluvcats09
Summary: Ptolemy is a pampered parakeet who has always wanted to fly. When he suddenly finds himself away from his Florida home, will he finally get his chance? Or will the ensuing events make him appreciate his life in a cage? A wee bit of OC/OC romance.
1. Chapter 1: Cats are inherently evil

Ptolemy the Alexandrine Parakeet sat on his perch, gnawing on his brightly colored wooden toy, enjoying the warm Florida weather.

"What's a kitty say?" came his owner Daniella's voice through the bars of his large cage.

"Mew," Ptolemy replied. "I don't know. Mew. I don't know." Daniella laughed. _Boy, I wish I could fly like one of the outside birds,_ Ptolemy thought. His wings were clipped, but Daniella always said that his feathers would grow back. He could understand her, even if she couldn't understand him, most of the time. He opened his beak, and a dreadful shriek came out. That was his stressed-out shriek.

"CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! CREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!"

"Ptolemy, stop that!" Daniella said, plugging her ears and running out of the room. Ptolemy fluffed his bright green feathers and clicked his strangely shaped tongue. Before Daniella could come into the room, disaster struck. Daniella's cat, Brandi, leapt at Ptolemy's cage, something she had never done before.

"Hey, cut that out!" Ptolemy said.

"Sorry, but Daniella's been giving you too much attention as of late. She only snuggles with me at night, and she talks to you all day! It's time for that to change." Brandi said in her smooth feline voice, and knocked Ptolemy's cage out of the large window. The latch came undone, and Ptolemy managed to glide out of the cage—sort of—before it hit the ground. He fell to the ground clumsily. He was in the middle of the road. He tried to walk, but one of his legs was sprained, and every step was so painful he could hardly bear it. He collapsed to the ground. The last thing he saw was a man and a woman who looked remarkably like Daniella, with several birds flying around them. Then all went black.

"Hello? Wake up, dude! Dude, wake up!"

"Yeah, wake up you sleepy head, wake up!"

Ptolemy opened his eyes to stare directly into the faces of a red crested cardinal and a canary. The canary was wearing a bottle cap on his head, and the cardinal was gently poking his wing.

"Wha…what just happened? Where am I?" Ptolemy asked.

"Dude, you're in Rio!" the cardinal said.

"We found you unconscious on the road when we were vacationing in Orlando," the canary added, actually answering Ptolemy's question.

"Who are you guys?" Ptolemy asked, sitting up and wincing.

"I'm Pedro, and this is Nico!" the cardinal said enthusiastically. "Welcome to the Conservatory!" Ptolemy put two and two together. Pedro, Nico, Rio De Janiero, it all made sense! Ptolemy had watched a movie with Daniella and Brandi just the other night, about some birds in Rio who had to evade a poacher and an evil cockatoo named Nigel. It had been computer animated, but could it be real?

"Hey, do you guys know a Blue Macaw named Blu?" Ptolemy asked.

"Yeah! Wait…how do YOU know him?" Pedro asked. Nico seemed to be a bird of few words, and Pedro did all of the talking.

"I heard of him somewhere, I can't remember where." Ptolemy didn't tell them that they were in a movie, one that he had seen before.

"Hey guys, is he awake yet?" Blu said. He had just come through the air vent—something he liked to do—and nobody had seen him coming. Nico nearly fell off the table, and Pedro jumped in fright. Ptolemy didn't even flinch; he was already used to Brandi sneaking up on him. "I see he is! Hi! I don't quite know your name."

Ptolemy felt foolish. He hadn't even told them his name yet!

"My name's Ptolemy."

"Like the astronomer?" Blue said, cocking his head.

"Yeah, like the astronomer."

"Hey, can I ask you a favor, guys?" Ptolemy needed to get back home, before Daniella worried. Scratch that, she was probably already worrying by now, with Brandi sitting on the sidelines washing herself, acting completely innocent. Ptolemy needed to get home before Daniella worried _too much_.

"Sure, Amigo!" Nico said.

"Can you guys help me get back home?"


	2. Chapter 2: Introductions

**Anyone who can guess what the (extremely subtle, I might add) cartoon reference in the last chapter was is awesome!  
I got some comments on how short the last chapter was, so hopefully this chapter is long enough! This will, hopefully, be a very long fanfic! I already have a lot planned for it-and I won't tell you what that is, but it's gonna be epic-but if you have any suggestions for what the characters should do while Ptolemy's leg is healing, tell me and I might put it in the story.  
**

"No way, Bro. You can't go nowhere with that leg of yours." Pedro gestured to Ptolemy's leg, which was still swollen and purple. Ptolemy winced when he so much as clenched his talons together.

"He can still fly," Nico reminded Pedro.

"Actually, I can't." Ptolemy stretched out his clipped wings. A single bright green feather dropped to the ground.

"You will soon," Blu said, landing behind Ptolemy. "You're molting. Your feathers are going to regrow! Then we'll get you back home." Ptolemy nodded and smiled the best smile he could without having any lips or extra facial muscles to speak of. Everything was eerily silent for a second, then high pitched giggling could be heard from somewhere in the room.

"Go get 'im," said a deep voice. Nico and Pedro stifled laughter, but Blu just looked around, obviously not knowing what was going on, even after being in Rio for a year and a half. Ptolemy was even more confused.

"Five. Four. Three. Two…" Pedro said, counting on his wing feathers, which seemed to function as fingers. Then something bit Ptolemy on the butt.

"YEAOWCH!" Ptolemy yelled, rubbing his butt where a feather had just been plucked out and glaring at the tiny toucan who had just eaten the feather. The little toucan giggled, and hopped away.

"Juan, you get back here right now or I am telling your mother!" A larger toucan flew in through the open window and, grabbing the smaller toucan by the tail, started to lecture him. Ptolemy looked on as the little toucan bit the bigger toucan (who appeared to be his father)'s wing. The bigger toucan let go and, after the initial startled cry of "Ouch!" simply giggled.

"Sorry about that," he said, smiling. "We need to get little Juan in for testing. We still don't know why he keeps eating other birds' feathers!"

"Um…Who's 'we'?" asked Ptolemy.

"Oh, you're new here! I'm Rafael," the toucan said, shaking Ptolemy's unsprained talon. "But you can call me Ralfy." Ralfy flew up into the air. "I've got to go tell Eva and the kids you're awake! Isabella will be so excited! She always loves visitors!" Ralfy—taking Juan with him, as an extra precaution—flew back out the window and down toward the rainforest, shouting all the way.

Five minutes were spent talking good-naturedly, with the native birds telling Ptolemy all of their adventures, not knowing that Ptolemy already knew most of them. If I—as in the author-had to tell the readers of this story what the conversation was, that would mean they hadn't seen the movie Rio, which would defeat the point of reading a fanfic FOR the movie Rio, if you get my point.

"Wait…" Ptolemy said, changing the subject. "Juan has a squeaky voice, and Ralfy doesn't approve of the feather-eating, so who was the guy who said "Go get 'im"?"

Nico and Pedro looked at each other with a sly expression that scared Ptolemy a little. Then, an extremely wet dog leapt from behind a crate and shouted into Ptolemy's ear.

"SURPRISE!" It didn't scare Ptolemy; the only thing Ptolemy was worried about was germs from the copious amounts of drool emanating from the dog's mouth. "My name's Luiz!"

"Sure," Ptolemy said, "Everyone pick on the newcomer. Sneak up on him, bite his butt, drown him in drool. He won't freak out." The dog backed up, offended.

"Oh, I didn't mean to offend you!" Ptolemy covered up his last statement. "I was just getting frustrated because nobody has made a REAL introduction yet. AND I don't know where we are, exactly. I know we're in Rio," _fly o' the ocean like an eagle, eagle_, he thought inwardly, "but WHERE are we in Rio?" Of course, they were in the bird conservatory, but if he told them he knew that, Pedro and Nico would freak out. He had already put them off by knowing Blu.

"Well, I gotta go. I'm kind of in a hurry. Just wanted to say hi!" Luiz jumped up and through the window, landing on the cushy bushes below.

"We're at the bird conservatory!" Blu said. "You can explore if you like, just don't, I mean DON'T, go into compartment 270. Tulio is an idiot; he just had to rescue that demon disguised as a cockatiel!" Blu spat on the table, which completely went against his personality. He was obviously talking about Nigel, who had gotten electrocuted but had survived.

"OK," Ptolemy said, limping to the edge of the table then falling ungracefully _off_ the edge of the table, which he didn't see coming.

"You know he's gonna go to compartment 270, right?" Nico said.

"Yeah. We'll berate him when he comes back." Pedro waved Ptolemy off with his wing.

"You mean, IF he comes back." Nico cringed, knowing what—or who, rather—was in compartment 270.

"Yes, if. If is good. Now, let's go get some nachos." Pedro, Blu, and Nico flew through the window, leaving Ptolemy to see for himself what was in compartment 270.

But Ptolemy already knew, of course. That was why he was going. To try to coerce Nigel into helping him get home, because Nigel was the only one who could.

**There's another movie quote in this chapter, but it's more obvious. Next chapter: Cockatiel Chaos.  
**


	3. Chapter 3: Cockatiel Chaos

**THE FOURTH WALL HAS BEEN BROKEN! **_  
_

_How will Nigel react to me?_ Ptolemy wondered as he undid the latch on Compartment 270. _I am a parakeet, after all._ Ptolemy put all of his weight on his good leg—it wasn't like he was putting much weight on the other one, anyway—and pushed open the cage door with his beak. The walk-in aviary reeked of bird doo-doo and rotten fruit. _Nigel isn't taking care of himself,_ he thought, then realized the thought was redundant because he could smell the stench from outside the cage. He looked up to see an emancipated cockatiel on a perch near the top of the cage, his head tucked under his wing. The cockatiel looked down at Ptolemy with glassy eyes.

"Get out of here," Nigel said, barely reacting to the fact that Ptolemy was a parakeet similar to the one who had taken his place as a star. "I'm not in the mood."

"Not in the mood to do what?" Ptolemy asked, deftly climbing up the side of the cage to sit on the perch as near to Nigel as he could get without risking getting gored.

"Just go away." Nigel tucked his head under his wing. _He needs a bath,_ Ptolemy thought as Nigel ruffled his feathers, wafting more of the stench into Ptolemy's nostrils.

"Nigel, I'm not going away until you at least acknowledge my presence." Ptolemy scooted closer to Nigel. "I need to ask you something."

"What?" Nigel looked up with an expression of reluctant tolerance on his face.

"Nigel, you used to live in Florida, right?" Ptolemy knew that because he had once had a fleeting glance at a sign for a bird show featuring the 'shining star' Nigel the Cockatiel.

"How did you know?" Nigel became slightly more alert as the memory was brought up.

"I saw a poster. Now, do you know how to get from here to Florida? I'm trying to get back to my owner, Daniella." Ptolemy scooted even closer to Nigel.

"Yes, I do. I flew here myself, duh!" Nigel fluffed his feathers proudly. _There's Nigel,_ Ptolemy thought. _Any second now, he's going to get really mad 'cause I'm a parakeet. I need to keep on full alert. I'm trapped in a cage with this thing._ Ptolemy contemplated scooting further away from Nigel, but stayed put, not wanting to offend the apparently emotionally unstable bird.

"Yeah," Ptolemy said, "But I can't fly. We'll need to walk."

"Not with that leg, you don't." Nigel pointed at Ptolemy's now-greenish swollen leg.

"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll hitch a ride from Luiz." Ptolemy cringed at the prospect of riding on that drool-bag. Especially on a fruit hat. Nigel looked at him like he was an idiot, then shrugged.

"Alright then. Now, here's what you do…"

"Oh no. You're coming with us." Ptolemy did NOT want Nigel to spend the rest of his life in this pit.

"Us?"

"Me, Pedro, Nico, Blu, and Ralfy."

"I AM NOT GOING WITH THOSE NINCOMPOOPS!"

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not."

"Yes, you are."

"No, I'm not." Nigel was starting to get mad. That was Ptolemy's goal. Ptolemy took on the most annoying voice he could.

"! I can go on like this for a long, long, LONG time, you know." Ptolemy leaned closer to Nigel and looked him straight in the eye threateningly.

"ALRIGHT, I'LL GO YOU FREAKY LITTLE TWIT!" Nigel swooped down to the doorway of the walk-in aviary. "Now are you coming or not?"

Ptolemy spoke slowly, tauntingly, in a sing-song voice. "Nigel, don't get your knickers in a twist." Nigel rolled his eyes and flew out of the room and down the hall toward the emergency care room, where Ptolemy's bedding was, and where Pedro, Blu, and Nico were. One of Nigel's legs looked different, but Ptolemy didn't pay any heed at the time. It was only when a particularly sharp stab of pain went through his own leg did he realize what was amiss.  
One of Nigel's legs was a prosthetic.

**Nigel is NOT OOC. He is just going through some emotional turmoil because he lost his leg.**


End file.
